What does medical herbal therapy preparations do

The core role of medical herbal therapy preparations is to rely on standardized processing and standardized extraction of natural herbal active ingredients, within the scope of evidence-based medicine verification, to provide users with the value of auxiliary disease treatment, rapid relief of uncomfortable symptoms, long-term conditioning of chronic diseases, and optimization of clinical prognosis. It is essentially a medical product that has been standardized and transformed by modern medicine between chemical drugs, biological agents, and traditional folk herbal therapies. It is completely different from the daily herbal skin care products and privately prepared folk remedies that everyone comes into contact with.

I was out with the deputy director of the dermatology department a while ago and met a 28-year-old girl who had been suffering from hormone-dependent dermatitis for almost two years. She took antihistamines and calcineurin inhibitors and the itching was stopped, but the redness on her cheeks never went away. She swelled like a peach when she was exposed to heat. She had to wear two layers of masks even at work. Later, the director prescribed her a brand-name purslane + asiaticoside dressing and asked her to apply it three times a week without adjusting the previous western medicine regimen. As a result, after a follow-up visit two weeks later, the redness on the girl's cheeks disappeared by almost 70%, and even the feeling of being hot before was gone.

Some people will definitely question this, isn’t this the placebo effect? Indeed, many scholars in the current mainstream Western medicine system are cautious about herbal preparations. The core reason is that the active ingredients of many early herbal preparations are unclear and the level of evidence-based evidence is not high. There are even many three-no products that pretend to be "medical herbs", which has ruined the reputation of the entire category. But it is undeniable that the artemisinin, ephedrine, and paclitaxel we commonly use now are essentially purified products extracted from herbs, and they have already become first-line drugs for related diseases. We cannot say that these are also placebos, right?

I was particularly impressed by a 72-year-old COPD patient who had to report to the hospital every winter for the past few years. His oxygen saturation dropped at the slightest movement, and he couldn't even speak fully after walking two steps and gasping for air. When the respiratory department adjusted his plan last year, they added an approved astragalus + salvia compound herbal preparation for him to take on time every day. At the same time, his regular medications such as inhalers and antihypertensive drugs were not reduced at all. As a result, he only came to the outpatient clinic once for review last winter, and he didn't even have an acute attack. It was perfectly fine for him to go downstairs for a walk to buy groceries.

Oh, by the way, not everyone is suitable for this type of tonic prescription. There is a 60-year-old COPD patient in the same ward who has a damp-heat constitution. He developed a sore throat and coughed up yellow phlegm within two days of using the same preparation, which actually aggravated the symptoms. Later, he changed to the mulberry white bark compound preparation to clear the lungs and get better. Individual differences cannot be ignored.

However, it must be said here that there are different voices within the traditional Chinese medicine community on the use of such preparations. Some veteran Chinese medicine practitioners feel that this standardized preparation has lost the essence of the traditional prescription of "monarch, minister and assistant" and is not as targeted as the decoction that is prepared and decoctioned. There are also young and middle-aged Chinese medicine practitioners who believe that standardized preparations have stable ingredients and controllable adverse reactions, and are more suitable for use in conjunction with Western medicine programs, and there is no need to stick to traditional administration methods. Both views are actually reasonable. In the final analysis, it still depends on the specific situation of the patient.

To be honest, I have seen too many people regard medical herbal preparations as either miracle medicine or garbage. Neither extreme is advisable. I once had a hypertensive patient who heard someone say that a certain herbal preparation could "radically cure high blood pressure." He stopped taking the antihypertensive drugs he had been taking for five or six years. As a result, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was sent to the emergency room within half a month. Do you think this preparation is strange? What's strange is that you don't understand and still mess with products whose uses are unknown.

Compliant medical herbal preparations either have a batch number with a national drug approval, or a product with a clinically proven mechanical brand. The active ingredient content and impurity ratio of each batch are fixed, and the adverse reactions are clearly written. There is no such nonsense as "radical cure" or "replacement of Western medicine".

In fact, the application scope of medical herbal preparations is still expanding. Those that promote healing after surgery, those that improve leukocyte reduction after chemotherapy, and those that regulate qi and blood after childbirth are all diverse. However, the core logic of action has never changed: use proven and controllable herbal ingredients to make up for the shortcomings of existing treatment options. The ultimate goal is to make patients suffer less and recover better. As for how to choose and how to use it, don’t figure it out on your own. Listening to the doctor is better than anything else.